NationStates Jolt Archive

I am quite certain that just about everything you learn in grade school about Thanksgiving is just lies...

But, since the silly myths about Columbus eating deer and turkey with random Native Americans isn't true, what are the origins of Thanksgiving?

And I don't mean as a national holiday, I mean as a holiday in the US.

I am quite certain that just about everything you learn in grade school about Thanksgiving is just lies...

But, since the silly myths about Columbus eating deer and turkey with random Native Americans isn't true, what are the origins of Thanksgiving?

And I don't mean as a national holiday, I mean as a holiday in the US.

I know nothing about thanksgiving, being non-American, but considering the real relationship between the settlers and the natives, it sounds like someone went way beyond putting a "spin" on American history.

I know nothing about thanksgiving, being non-American, but considering the real relationship between the settlers and the natives, it sounds like someone went way beyond putting a "spin" on American history.


Well, yeah. The myths about thanksgiving are just silly, it's hard to believe that they're taught at all when you learn how the Native Americans were really treated by the European settlers.

I am quite certain that just about everything you learn in grade school about Thanksgiving is just lies...

But, since the silly myths about Columbus eating deer and turkey with random Native Americans isn't true, what are the origins of Thanksgiving?

And I don't mean as a national holiday, I mean as a holiday in the US.

PAGAN HARVEST.

Well, the original Thanksgiving in North America was nothing more than, well, giving thanks for the harvest through a celebratory meal, which was undoubtedly rooted in the religious tradition of the American Puritan colonists. As far as I know, it was an annual holiday in New England by the 1680's, although other similar holidays had been developed by other colonists and colonisers (including the Dutch).

Well, me and my family celebrate Xgiving. And yes, we do eat a Holiday Turkey.

http://www.historychannel.com/thanksgiving/

Well, the original Thanksgiving in North America was nothing more than, well, giving thanks for the harvest through a celebratory meal, which was undoubtedly rooted in the religious tradition of the American Puritan colonists. As far as I know, it was an annual holiday in New England by the 1680's, although other similar holidays had been developed by other colonists and colonisers (including the Dutch).
Then, during the Civil War, Lincoln decided it would be a good idea to make it a holiday.

I am quite certain that just about everything you learn in grade school about Thanksgiving is just lies...

But, since the silly myths about Columbus eating deer and turkey with random Native Americans isn't true, what are the origins of Thanksgiving?

And I don't mean as a national holiday, I mean as a holiday in the US.
Well, first off, it wan't Columbus, it was a group of Puritan Separatists commonly called the "Pilgrims" today, who settled at Plymouth, Massachusetts, the third colony in the future US after Jamestown and Ft. Augustine . Now, this group did initially fight with the Amerindians, as misunderstandings of course occurred between the two peoples, but they had no soldiers so there were only light skirmishes.

There were apparently some natives among the group that had dealt with English fisherman and thus knew some English. They got the Pilgrims in contact with an Amerindian who had been a slave in Europe, but had made his way back to his homeland (thanks to some anti-slavery Catholic monks) only to find that his tribe had been wiped out by disease (probably smallpox that was already spreading from Jamestown.)

This Amerindian, Squanto, was able to translate for the Pilgrims, as he had learned the local tribe’s languages. Over the course of several years, the two groups became close and the Amerindians imparted knowledge of how to survive in the wilderness, being compelled by the massive death tolls of the Pilgrims during their first winter.

At the second harvest season, the Amerindians wanted to practice their harvest festival with the pilgrims (more food, bigger party). The feast lasted three days and cemented the friendship for both sides. The Pilgrims settled into a rather religiously influenced communistic society where the good of the whole mattered more that of the individual.

Inevitably, though, the British government followed the Pilgrims, more settlers came and the Amerindians became merely a barrier, not allies. The sons of those who had broken bread with the natives, fought the first major war in New England to obliterate the sons of those natives.

Bah ... there's way more than one "first" Thanksgiving. The Caddo of Texas had a "Harvest Feast" with the Spaniards in the 1530s. I tend to think of that one as first.

Seeing as how all the food that these crazy Puritan people brought with them couldnt be perishable, they probably lived on salted pork, dried beans, a few grains, and anything they could drag out of the water, or shoot.

For a year or so...

So...being able to hog down with some relatively peaceful natives would sound like a pretty good way to celebrate a harvest.
However, turkey probably wasnt on the menu.

It was far more likely they ate venison and rabbit.

Believe it or not, but Germans celebrate their own Thanksgiving. It's called "Erntedankfest" (meaning "Harvest Thanking Holiday" more or less) and it's a religious holiday, where people go to church and thank god for the harvest.

So, if I imagine that the Puritans had similar beliefs to those, then you know where it comes from.
http://www.serve.com/shea/germusa/erntdank.htm

Well, first off, it wan't Columbus, it was a group of Puritan Separatists commonly called the "Pilgrims" today, who settled at Plymouth, Massachusetts, the third colony in the future US after Jamestown and Ft. Augustine . Now, this group did initially fight with the Amerindians, as misunderstandings of course occurred between the two peoples, but they had no soldiers so there were only light skirmishes.

There were apparently some natives among the group that had dealt with English fisherman and thus knew some English. They got the Pilgrims in contact with an Amerindian who had been a slave in Europe, but had made his way back to his homeland (thanks to some anti-slavery Catholic monks) only to find that his tribe had been wiped out by disease (probably smallpox that was already spreading from Jamestown.)

This Amerindian, Squanto, was able to translate for the Pilgrims, as he had learned the local tribe’s languages. Over the course of several years, the two groups became close and the Amerindians imparted knowledge of how to survive in the wilderness, being compelled by the massive death tolls of the Pilgrims during their first winter.

At the second harvest season, the Amerindians wanted to practice their harvest festival with the pilgrims (more food, bigger party). The feast lasted three days and cemented the friendship for both sides. The Pilgrims settled into a rather religiously influenced communistic society where the good of the whole mattered more that of the individual.

Inevitably, though, the British government followed the Pilgrims, more settlers came and the Amerindians became merely a barrier, not allies. The sons of those who had broken bread with the natives, fought the first major war in New England to obliterate the sons of those natives.

Right on.

It's also important to remember that:

1) Squanto was not the only one.
By the time of the Pilgrims, European (and especially English) fisherman had been coming to the shores of North America for a generation, and several native persons (most notably the Wampanoag Indians -- whom the Pilgrims later encountered) actually were taken to England on those ships. Another good example was in 1605, when Captain George Weymouth returned to Plymouth, England from a voyage to Monhegan and the islands of Muscongus Bay. Weymouth brought five Indians kidnapped from the Maine coast. So it wasn't like Jamestown was a wild stab in the dark -- the English colonists had some idea about the New World.

2) Due to the Spanish advances in the Americas during the previous few generations (and English and Dutch fishermen and traders), the Natives of North America had been decimated by disease, down to perhaps 10-30% of their numbers in the 1450s. The huge settlement of Cahokia (near present St. Louis) is a prime example, which had been the same size as Paris.

One expects that the conquest of the New World by the various colonizing powers would have been much more difficult if not impossible had they not been so vulnerable to the diseases that the Europeans had built up immunities to.

In my own area (Connecticut) most of the tribes were killed by diseases brought by the English and Dutch colonists. There was actually very little fighting in most of the 13 colonies until the mid 1700s.